Hurricane Sandy

Devastating

Waves battered the shore all along the east coast of America as Hurricane Sandy made landfall on Monday

Source: AP

New York and New Jersey were hardest hit, with many residents advised to evacuate to higher ground

Source: AP

Atlantic City experienced floods from ocean surges

The New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time since the attacks of September 11th

Source: AP

Barack Obama withdrew from the campaign trail and returned to Washington in order to deal with the crisis

Source: AFP

As day turned to night, New York's police watched over dark streets. Much of the city was without power

Source: REUTERS

The lights on the Brooklyn Bridge stand in contrast to the lower Manhattan skyline

Source: AP

Millions of citizens on the east coast woke up to darkened homes, downed trees, flooded streets and news of some 30 dead

Source: REUTERS

Roads, businesses and schools have been closed. Subway systems were shut down from Washington to Boston, with New York facing floods in several tunnels

Source: EPA

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, called it "a storm of unprecedented proportions”

Source: AP

Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, says the damage to his state is “incalculable”

Source: AP

IN SOME ways Hurricane Sandy has been a mercurial storm, with mild mists followed by violent gusts of wind and sheets of rain. Its devastation is rather more lasting. On Tuesday millions of people on America's east coast woke up to darkened homes, downed trees, flooded streets and news of over 30 dead.

New York and New Jersey were hardest hit, with the president declaring "major disasters" in both states. Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, says the damage to his state is “incalculable”. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, called it "a storm of unprecedented proportions”.

For many, life has come to a halt, as roads, businesses and schools have been closed. Subway systems were shut down from Washington to Boston, with New York facing floods in several tunnels. Trains up and down the east coast were cancelled and flights grounded. Millions of those now stranded are still without power.

In the face of such devastation, both presidential candidates have withdrawn from the campaign trail. The storm has even inspired a rare moment of bipartisanship, with Mr Christie, a prominent supporter of Mitt Romney, praising Mr Obama's response as "outstanding". (The two will tour the damage in New Jersey on Wednesday.) Others, though, are making hay of a comment from Mr Romney, earlier in the campaign, in which he called for sending emergency-management responsibilities to the states.

A storm of this magnitude shows up the need for federal involvement, though the debate will continue over whether that should come in the form of merely "help" or coordination. It appears that, so far, actors on both the federal and state levels have performed admirably. (Twitter types on the left are already crowing about the effectiveness of government.) The Federal Emergency Management Agency seems to have learned some lessons from Hurricane Katrina, deploying resources early and in strategic locations. The utilities have followed suit. In New York, workers for the power company blanket the post-apocalyptic landscape.

Meanwhile, both parties have spun arguments about how the storm will, or will not, help them on election day. But there is a question of whether election day will even come off in some areas. Mr Christie believes power will be restored in time for the vote, and Mr Obama seems unconcerned. “I spoke to the president three times yesterday,” Mr Christie told CNN. “If he’s not bringing it up, I’m certainly not going to bring it up.”

The loss of 30+ lives is always regrettable. To get a sense of perspective, consider that the 2004 Sumatra 'quake claimed 227,898 lives, and the 2011 Japan 'quake, 20,896. Then ask if calling this a "major disaster" that caused "incalculable" damage is justified.

The tremendous improvements in the past decade or two in understanding and predicting hurricane movements played a huge role in limiting loss of life. People had several days' warning to prepare. It behaved very much as predicted, even though it's the first storm to hit like this in a century. And as predicted, the storm surge was in fact the most damaging part.

Just imagine if NYC had not closed the tunnels, shut down the subway, etc.

In these days of disdain for large-scale complex modeling (see the war on polling nerds) and questions of funding for basic science research carried out by groups like NOAA, it's worth stepping back and seeing that our early investment (of money, but mostly of trying to understand how this worked so we could do better in the future) paid off.

The reason to have big government weather services or earthquake services is that the private market only does local.

So without a national weather service, you'd have some private weather forecasters in Florida looking at this thing as it went through Haiti and Cuba. They'd be speculating and predicting, but all of that speculation would be in terms of "Will it hit Florida?"

When it doesn't, would these same meteorologists do all the math to predict that it might come back and hit New York, a once in a century occurrence? Probably not, and if they did, they wouldn't do it as fast.

Also, you never answered me about RealClearPolitics not using Public Policy Polling recently. It's odd, PPP has three new state polls out and none of them are on the website. All of these polls in these states from Public Policy Polling were on the aggregator on October 7th.

They've stopped using most of the newer PPP polls and I can't figure out why.

Absolutely. Part of my family lore is how my grandfather was the first person to warn the bulk of Bourne, Massachusetts about Hurricane Carol in the 1950s.

He wandered down to the beach early in the morning and thought the tide looked a little too high. He went home, checked his tide charts, came back and noticed the water was even higher. They managed to get almost everyone out of the low-lying neighborhood, where elsewhere, Coast Guard skiffs were picking old ladies up off their rooftops.

I'd rather depend on the government, or any group of collective resources, than one man's insomnia.

What President Romney claims he would do in a major weather crisis affecting multiple states is a highly relevant question. As is what the incumbent does.

I really do not understand the conservative hair-pulling at quoting Mr. Romney's previous positions, in context. Conservatives should be eager to explain how much more awesome things would be under Romney's management, with FEMA defunded and it left to NJ and NY to raise taxes to an amount able to cover unpredictable and erratic storms. If this is an awesome idea, far superior to the whole federal concept, defend it already.

They don't. We only see the extremes on TV, since the moderate masses tend to be quite uninteresting. It's the same reason idiotic shows are constantly aired.

Just look at the poll numbers for proof -- Obama had a double-digit lead, but within a week Romney was up by 6 points himself. Obviously people don't really hate either candidate if they're willing to switch. And politics aside, his likability rating is through the roof even among Republicans; it's only horrible among Tea Partiers.

The media gives us an exaggerated view of what Americans actually think, and there's a reason both Romney and Obama had identical centrist platforms during the debate.

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.
"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"
"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.
"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."
I think he was pretty clear with his comments here.
Link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/28/mitt-romney-fema_n_2036198.html

Such "once in a lifetime" weather events will happen more often in the coming decades.
Human made global warming is changing the weather paterns now and will lead to more destructive weather. Preparing for that and removing debris and rebuilding destroyed stuff will even produce more CO2 that goes into the atmosphere.

Thank you for your additional comments, with which I respectfully disagree, at least in part.

First, I am an Independent and have been one for the last 25 years or so, after growing up in a "devoutly" Republican family and first becoming a Democrat when I was old enough to vote. I worked on Capitol Hill and saw both parties up close, before total partisan "gridlock" set in, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama.

The Democrats are pure evil, while the Republicans are "Neanderthals," although I generally vote for Republican candidates.

I will repeat again, because it deserves underscoring: Barack Obama is a Narcissistic demagogue and an opportunist, who will not be reelected. He and his "Marie Antoinette" will retreat either to Chicago or Hawaii no later than next January, to lick their political wounds and write their memoirs, and work full time on his presidential library.

It cannot happen fast enough for the good of the United States and the American people!

Second, in addition to being a Narcissistic demagogue and an opportunist, who will not be reelected, Obama has shrewd advisers (e.g., David Axelrod, David Plouffe) around him, who are "milking" Sandy for all she is worth.

Third, "porker" Christie should have kept his mouth shut, like Mike Bloomberg did. However, Christie wants to run for the presidency, and this is part of his "bipartisan" appeal. Most Republicans and Independents will be turned off bigtime though.

Loss of life wasn't as significant as other disasters but in practically every other way, this was the worst disaster in the area's history. We aren't exactly prepared for hurricanes here. We had a subway system and tunnels that millions rely on every day. Temperatures are in the 40s at night and a million people have no power, twice the entire population of pre-Katrina New Orleans. The market hasn't shutdown for 2 days since the 19th century. Hundreds of homes destroyed. Some of those places you see on Jersey Shore or Boardwalk Empire that have been around forever were swept out into the ocean. 33 dead makes it seem insignificant but the immediate economic impact far exceeds Katrina or 9/11, though the recovery will be relatively quick.

It may come off as callous, to relate the degree and severity of natural disasters in terms of the loss of lives. While I agree that the events in Sumatra and Japan are far more regretable, then the reprecussions form hurricane Sandy; I don't think its fair to rebuff terms like "major disaster" and "incalculable damage", simply because of the mitigation of loss of life.
If hurricane Sandy were to befall a much poorer nation, there would most likely be higher death toll. On the premise of more limited natural resources and probably a lack of a preparatory plan. My point being I don't think its fair to belittle this event just because it happened to much wealthier people.
On a lighter note, aside from the regretable loss of life, it's been humorous to here about New Yorker's hiking dozens of blocks to find a network signal in order to access their Facebook.